Beckham’s Bookshop in New Orleans jogs my memory how enjoyable studying will be | Leisure/Life

On the final Saturday of August, I started my morning with The New York Times, which carried one more story in regards to the decline of studying throughout the nation.

Over the previous 20 years, the share of Americans who learn for pleasure fell 40%, as The Times reported. It’s a sobering development with a variety of potential implications for the long run. Reading has many social advantages, and our connections with one another can develop weaker when fewer of us discover the frequent floor that books typically present.

But civic engagement wasn’t the very first thing I considered after studying The Times’ story.

Instead, whereas mulling over the prospect of these legions of nonreaders on the market, I anxious about all of the enjoyable they’re lacking. Fun was prime of thoughts that day as a result of my spouse and I have been planning a weekend drive to the French Quarter, the place our first cease was Beckham’s Bookshop, a longtime Decatur Street vacation spot for these in quest of classic volumes.

I’d first visited Beckham’s in 1990, choosing up an 1858 version of “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Steve and Katrina Lacy purchased Beckham’s from Carey Beckham and Alton Cook final 12 months. Steve has operated close by Dauphine Street Books, which sells previous and new titles, since 1994.

“I had often thought how wonderful it would be to buy Beckham’s,” Steve informed me. “We find that we’re doing pretty well so far.”

On an higher flooring of Beckham’s, Katrina has been creating Madame Lacy’s Retreat as a group gathering place. It just lately hosted a yoga program, and different plans are within the works. But books have been the star of Beckham’s because it opened a few years in the past, and that custom is constant with the Lacys.

The store’s tall home windows and excessive ceilings create an open really feel that brightens the shopping expertise, although guests might need to stroll round Joni, the store feline. I discovered her napping by a historical past shelf, adorning the area like a throw rug.

“We say she’s the real owner,” Steve talked about.

While looking for one other quantity of Virginia Woolf’s diaries, I discovered as an alternative “The Journey Not the Arrival Matters,” a memoir by Woolf’s husband, Leonard, about their life collectively. My odyssey to seek out some medical essays by Oliver Sacks introduced one other completely happy accident once I noticed “The Patient Has the Floor,” a set of speeches by one among my favourite writers, Alistair Cooke. Spying a replica of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s “A Time of Gifts” made me really feel even luckier.

I’d cherished “A Time to Keep Silence,” his account of visits to European monasteries, and I knew this different Old World travelogue could be simply pretty much as good. I additionally nabbed “At Home and Abroad,” a set of journey items by V.S. Pritchett, an English writer I’ve cherished for years.

I’m sorry that fewer persons are studying nowadays. They actually don’t know what they’re lacking.

Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.